Ethical use of AI
Ethical Considerations When Using AI
At Jamk, the use of AI applications requires that you recognize your responsibility as an author. When using AI applications, you must always consider ethical principles and applicable legislation.
From an ethical perspective, the starting point for using AI is to transparently describe how and in what context it has been used, and how it affects your work, such as the preparation of plans or materials, theses, projects, or research. Do not present AI-generated content—such as text, conclusions, sources, images, or tables—as your own, to avoid misconduct.
Both staff and students should use AI tools supported and verified by Jamk for information security.
The use of AI should always be transparent and considered. Be aware of how AI processes data and where data may be transferred. AI services may transfer data outside the EU/EEA area.
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- Assess the potential benefits and harms of AI use for those involved in a thesis, project, or research, as well as for other stakeholders. For example, consider the perspectives of minors, guardians, relatives, company representatives, or staff, how does the use of AI applications affect them, or how do they perceive it?
- What positive contributions does AI use bring to your work? Is the use of AI necessary, and does it add value? Describe the added value.
- The greater the impact of AI use on others, the more critically its use should be considered. Such situations include, for example, the assessment of others’ work or performance, decision making and the processing of personal data with generative AI.
- Do you recognize and manage the laws, obligations, regulations, and guidelines related to AI use, such as data protection regulations, the EU AI Act, copyright, and privacy protection?
- The carbon footprint of generative AI is significant.
- Copyright is granted to a human and is the result of creative work. If there is no human creator, the work is not considered a protected work. AI is not a natural person and therefore cannot hold copyright.
- You hold copyright only if, for example, when creating an article, podcast, or poster, you have not infringed anyone else’s copyright, including through the improper use of AI.
- Check publishers’ terms of use when planning, for example, to create a summary of a scientific article using an AI application. Terms of use often prohibit text mining and the use of AI.
- AI may be used to analyze public and general-interest reports if the material is publicly available and not subject to copyright restrictions, terms of use, or exclusive rights that would prevent automatic analysis or data mining. Such materials include, for example, reports from ministries or municipalities.
- AI applications cannot determine whether they infringe copyright.
- You should inform participants in theses, projects, or research if you utilize AI applications in data collection or analysis.
- You are responsible for describing as transparently as possible how the AI application is used, where data from the application is transferred, and how the material is processed by AI. Do not leave the responsibility of familiarizing oneself with the AI application’s or language model’s operating principles (e.g., system privacy statements) to the research subject or participant.
- Is the data you input into AI used to train the language model? If so, you must be able to describe what kind of data has been used to train the application and how, for example, the results of a project or thesis have been achieved.
- Remember that you are always responsible for the accuracy of the results and must respect the rights of others.
- Respect autonomy and privacy when using AI. Inform participants or research subjects if you input personal data into AI and note this in privacy statements. As a rule, remove personal data from the data before submitting it to AI for analysis.
- Always describe the use of AI openly and use it transparently in assignments, theses, reports, and publications.
- Do not present AI-generated outputs such as images, tables, or text as your own. Otherwise, you may be guilty of misconduct, such as plagiarism or fabrication.
- Remember proper citation and referencing. If you use AI-generated text or images, either as-is or modified, cite them as you would any other source.
- AI-generated text, images, or material should be critically evaluated. Ensure that content produced with AI does not undermine fairness, reduce the reliability of information, increase discrimination, or reinforce biases.
- AI applications cannot guarantee that the information they produce will not harm people, nature, or the environment. Nor do they promise to respect human rights, such as privacy or safety. Therefore, it is the user’s responsibility to ensure that the use of AI is ethically sustainable.
- You must be able to demonstrate how materials have been processed and how results have been achieved.
- The same principles of responsible conduct of research (RCR) apply to the use of AI as to all other activities.
- If ethical violations—such as misconduct or disregard —occur when using AI, a report must always be made in accordance with Jamk’s ethical principles.
- Proven misconduct or disregard always has consequences, such as resubmission of work, a warning, or, in serious or repeated cases, temporary suspension of a student or, for staff, alleged violation of research integrity (so-called RI violation).
For more information and instructions:
The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) will publish recommendations for the ethical use of AI in summer 2026.
We recommend utilizing the following guidelines when using AI. Both sites are also suitable for contexts beyond research:
The University of Helsinki’s guidance on The Use of Generative AI in Research includes a helpful “Do Not /Pay Attention/Check” list for generative AI.
The guidelines of Tampere Universities clearly highlight practical application at different research stages and the requirements set by legislation.
Jamk’s ethical guidelines:
For students: Ethical Principles and Research Ethics at Jamk (intranet)
For staff: Ethical principles and Research Ethics at Jamk (intranet)